The invention relates to the field of rotary actuators for use in Winchester disk drives, and more particularly, to a one-piece cast rotary actuator used in a Winchester disk drive.
Rotary actuators for moving read/write heads from one track to another in Winchester disk drives are, of course, well-known. These prior art rotary actuators are formed by securing a leg assembly (consisting of several legs which might be a single unit) to a body. Other rotary actuators have been constructed by painstakingly mounting each individual leg portion onto the body. Examples of such prior art actuators are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,443,824, 4,430,679, 4,422,115, 4,346,416 and 4,107,748. In these prior art rotary actuators, the head-support legs are usually joined to a body by screws. Likewise, a coil support frame on which the actuator "motor" coil is supported also is joined to the body by screws. Hence, assembly is needed to join the legs or the coil-support frame to the body. Obviously, such an assemblage of the rotary actuator is extremely labor intensive.
In addition, with a single, multi-arm actuator, it is not possible to get screws onto the intermediate arms to secure the flexure elements to the arms of the actuator due to space constraints.